There were two men outside braving the cold and they were in earnest conversation, their heads bowed together. The shorter of the two was very angry with the other, as he was making very plain. ‘You’re a total fucking idiot!’ I heard him say. ‘You absolutely shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t even be in the country. It’s far too risky.’
‘No one will ever know,’ said the other man.
‘I know, and that in itself is bad enough,’ replied the first.
At that moment the two seemed to notice my presence and instantly stopped talking. One of them even pointedly turned away from me so I couldn’t see his face.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Don’t mind me. I’m just getting some air.’
They just stood there, waiting, so I went back inside.
The room was, by now, getting very full indeed and people were beginning to move towards their places at the tables that were laid for lunch. Time to go, I thought.
I looked round for Derrick Smith and for Lord Marylebone to say my goodbyes, but they were both busy talking to others at the far end of the room, so I worked my way towards the exit to leave quietly. Sir Richard Reynard was standing there on his own, next to the coat rack.
‘Please say goodbye to Mr Smith for me,’ I said to him.
He looked at me and nodded.
As I turned towards the door, I glanced back through the windows towards the balcony. The two men were still deep in discussion but, this time, I was able to see both their faces.
I whipped my iPhone out of my pocket and took a quick long-distance photo of them. As I’d lifted the phone, they both happened to look straight at me so I had a good shot of their full faces.
One never knew when such things might be useful.
Having no lunch, added to his run around the course, must have done the trick because Dave Swinton had evidently met his ten-stone-four target.
At a quarter to three I watched as he emerged from the weighing room wearing Integrated’s black, red and white colours and went to join the horse’s owner and trainer in the parade ring.
The Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup, run at Newbury each year on the last Saturday in November, is one of the most prestigious races on the calendar.
The two steeplechases that every owner, trainer and jockey are desperate to win are the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the Grand National, but the Hennessy would maybe come in an equal third alongside the likes of the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park on Boxing Day, and the Queen Mother Champion Chase.
Hence the mixture of excitement and anticipation in the Newbury parade ring was palpable, with some owners shifting from foot to foot, unable to keep still in their nervousness as they waited on the grass.
The same was true for the jockeys.
For the up-and-coming, this was one of those days when careers could be made or lost, while the old hands looked worryingly over their shoulders at the young whippersnappers who would cheerfully take their jobs without a heartbeat of hesitation.
Finally, an official rang the bell for the jockeys to get mounted and, one by one, they took their proper places on the horses’ backs, completing a transformation from diminutive bystanders into gods.
I stood by the rail as the horses made their way from the ring out to the course.
‘Good luck,’ I called to Dave as he passed.
He looked down at me and smiled but said nothing. I thought he looked unwell with the deep-set eyes, hollow cheeks and thin lips of one who was undernourished and dehydrated.
This was his fourth ride of the afternoon, any one of which would have left most normal men exhausted. Dave, meanwhile, had had no breakfast and no lunch, not even a drink of water.
No wonder he looked unwell.
Integrated won the Hennessy by a nose in the tightest of photo-finishes, Dave Swinton employing all his magic to urge the horse to stretch its neck at just the right moment to pip the favourite to the line.
The crowd went wild and they continued to cheer as Dave manoeuvred Integrated into the unsaddling space reserved for the winner, his gaunt pre-race appearance having been banished by a huge smile and a hefty dose of adrenalin.
He was still grinning as he walked towards me on his way back into the weighing room, his saddle over his arm.
‘Now, that’s why I do it,’ he said. ‘Bloody marvellous.’
‘No question of you losing that one, then?’ I said.
The smile vanished for a second but quickly returned although, this time, it didn’t quite reach to his eyes.
‘Not a chance.’
3
For the second morning running, Dave Swinton woke me by calling before seven o’clock.
‘Jeff, I need to talk to you.’
‘That’s what you said yesterday,’ I replied.
‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry. But I do need to talk to you now.’
‘Talk to me on the phone,’ I said.
‘No. It has to be face to face.’
‘Then you’ll have to come to London to see me. You wasted my time yesterday and I have no intention of allowing it to happen again.’
‘I can’t come to London,’ he said. ‘I’ve got five rides later today and I need to take a spell in the sauna first. I celebrated the Hennessy with a steak last night and it’s made me fat.’
Whatever words that could have been chosen to describe him, fat was not one of them.
‘Look, Dave,’ I said, ‘there’s little point in me coming all the way to Lambourn again unless you’re going to tell me what’s going on. And I mean everything that’s going on. Yesterday was a total waste of time.’
‘You got to see me win the Hennessy — that wasn’t a waste of time.’ I could visualize him grinning at the other end of the line.
‘Yeah, OK. That was good,’ I agreed. ‘Well done.’
‘So will you come?’
I sighed.
‘Promise me you have something important to tell me.’
‘I have,’ he said. ‘For a start, I know who it is.’
‘Who who is?’ I asked.
‘You know, what we talked about yesterday. I know who it is.’
I assumed he meant that he knew who was blackmailing him.
‘Then tell me now, on the phone.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding, mate,’ he said. ‘I don’t trust these things any more.’
I suppose I couldn’t really blame him. Dave Swinton had been one of those whose phone had been previously hacked by a red-top Sunday newspaper.
‘OK,’ I said with resignation. ‘I’ll come, but you had better not be messing with me again.’
‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘I promise. But come right now. I’ve a ride in the first race at Towcester and that’s at twelve forty-five, so I have to be gone from here by half past ten, absolute latest.’
The trains on a Sunday were not as frequent or as fast as they had been the day before, and I had to change at Reading to catch a local stopping service that seemed to take for ever to get to Hungerford.
There was just one taxi waiting outside the station and I beat another would-be fare down the stairs from the platform to the road by only a little more than Integrated had won the Hennessy.
‘I’m going to Lambourn,’ I said to the loser, a white-haired man with a walking stick, whom I reckoned was in his early seventies. ‘Do you want to share?’
He shook his head. ‘No, thanks, I’m going the other way.’
I was half inclined to allow the older man to take the taxi, but I was in serious danger of missing Dave altogether if I was delayed any more. Rather ashamedly, I climbed in and slammed the door shut.
‘I’m the only taxi working in Hungerford today,’ said the driver as we drove away. ‘He’ll be there for quite a while — until I get back, I shouldn’t wonder.’